I'm Frank Proto,
professional chef and culinary instructor,
and today I'm gonna show you
how to make three of my go-to dips at home:
French onion, hummus, and spinach artichoke.
This is Dips 101.
I love making my own dips at home
because I control what goes in them.
I'm always gonna choose the best ingredients
for the people that I love.
If you buy them at the store,
you don't know what's in them
or they might have preservatives that you don't want.
You can also control the seasoning, spice level.
You're always gonna get a better reaction,
and people will be blown away
with how much better they are
than if you bought them at the store.
[light music]
Chef, you're making french onion dip.
Why wouldn't you just use the packet?
And I'm telling you, this is going to be miles ahead
of just using the packet.
You're choosing your ingredients,
you're taking care and love,
and people are gonna love it
so much more than the packet.
Take the time to do it.
French onion dip has most of the components
that French onion soup has in it.
So I wanna start out by caramelizing my onions.
I have a nice, big stainless steel pan.
Put it on high just to start.
And I wanna get my pan nice and hot.
I start out with high heat and then I lower it down.
I'm using a neutral oil
just to get the bottom of my pan coated.
So you can see that my oil
is starting to get a little shimmery.
Whenever I add things to the pan,
I add them away from me so I don't get burned.
Snap, crackle, pop.
That's what we want, sizzling and not steaming.
Leave it on high heat for a few minutes. Add salt now.
The salt right now
is just gonna draw some moisture out of the onions.
You can see I'm starting to get brown already,
and that's good,
but if I leave this at this high temperature,
things are gonna get brown too quick.
I have some fresh thyme and I have some bay leaf.
I leave it whole because then it's easy to take out.
And I'm just gonna lower my heat a little
and let those sugars caramelize.
These onions are gonna take about 10 to 15 minutes.
Don't rush this, you don't want to burn them.
My heat's a little high.
I'm gonna lower it just a little.
So you can see that my onions are nice and brown.
They've actually gotten translucent
and they're cooked all the way through, they're soft.
We wanna stop here
and hit it with just a touch more salt.
Put this onto a tray, flatten it out
so that it cools faster and it doesn't overcook.
And we're gonna put it in the fridge.
Caramelized onions are cool.
You can make this dip a couple of days ahead.
It's actually better the longer it sits.
Sour cream's going in the bowl.
Use full-fat sour cream, please.
Mayonnaise has a little zing, it has some nice flavor.
Get my caramelized onions into the bowl.
Onion powder or garlic powder are some of the things
that people don't think chefs would use.
When I was a younger cook or a younger chef,
I would never use onion powder,
but I've come around on it.
It has a lot of strength,
a lot of onion flavor in a small amount.
Another thing that I'm using
and that's a convenience product
is actually a beef bullion powder.
It has a beefy, rich, meaty flavor,
'cause a lot of french onion soup has beef broth.
A lot of the stuff we're putting in our French onion dip
mimic what French onion soup tastes like.
Black pepper, always fresh cracked.
Now, we have to be careful with the salt
because we have the beef bouillon powder in,
so I'm gonna go light on the salt for now
and then I'm gonna add sherry vinegar.
If you can't find sherry, use what you got.
And it's kind of like a secret ingredient that chefs use.
If something's a little dull and lackluster in a sauce,
a little lemon juice, a little vinegar, and it pops.
And now all we have to do is just mix this together.
We wanna get that onion powder
and we wanna make sure that that beef bullion powder
is broken up and not in lumps.
I want to taste it now
to make sure that I have the seasoning correct.
As you get things colder,
the seasoning is a little dulled,
so I want this to be just a little more
than what I would normally season.
So give it a little taste.
I'm gonna add a pinch of salt
and just a little more black pepper.
If you look at this, it's kinda liquidy.
If we put this in the fridge,
it's actually gonna firm back up again.
It's gonna absorb all those ingredients,
it's going to equalize,
so it'll be a nice thick, creamy, rich dip.
It goes in the fridge, it's gonna rest,
and then we can eat it.
Look at that. My onion dip has sat.
You see it's gotten a lot thicker.
The color changed as well. It got a little browner.
Some of that caramelized onion
kind of seeped out into there.
So let's plate it up. No wimpy bowls here, right?
I get a little bit of this caramelized onion that we saved
and we're gonna just try and put it around.
And then I have some fresh thyme leaves
that I'm just gonna kind of like dot around.
And at the end of the day, like, yeah,
you could use the packet, but look at this.
Come on, you serve this to someone and they're like,
Wow, Frank actually cares about me.
What would onion dip be
without a nice big bag of Ruffle chips?
Make sure we get a little bit of everything in there.
[chip crunching]
It has a ton of zing to it.
The fresh onions just make this, like,
super, super savory and delicious.
If you take the time to make this and say,
Hey, look, I made some onion dip,
people will be blown away.
It's that much more delicious
than anything you can buy in a package.
[light music]
Hummus is a dip or a spread
that you'll see throughout the Middle East.
Hummus, when I was younger,
wasn't in the national consciousness of America.
Now hummus is everywhere.
You can buy the stuff at the at the store pre-packaged,
but this one is like a thousand times better.
The base of hummus is chickpeas.
We do have canned chickpeas here,
and canned beans, to me,
are one of the best convenience products out there
just for the fact that they're cooked really, really nice.
But for my hummus, I like to cook them just a little more.
This step, where we boil them for about 20 minutes,
makes our hummus super creamy, super smooth.
If you don't have the time for this,
use it straight out of the can.
I save the liquid from the chickpeas
in case I have to adjust the final consistency.
These beans are going.
I'm gonna cover 'em up and just let them simmer away.
We don't want this to be a hard boil.
If it's boiling, they start to break up
and they fall apart completely
and that's not what we want.
My chickpeas have been simmering for about 20 minutes.
Shut it off, bring it over to the sink,
and I'm gonna dump all that liquid out.
We don't need to save that.
If you look, some of the skins are coming off,
they're starting to split in half,
and that's what we want.
So I cooked the chickpeas, got 'em nice and tender.
I've let them cool.
All we really have to do is make the dip now.
Take my chickpeas. They all go in.
At this point, I'm going to add a little bit of garlic,
about two cloves here.
It depends on what you're looking for.
Are you looking for super garlicy?
Are you looking for just a little bit of garlic?
I think two medium cloves like this are really good.
Just give it a little whack
and right into your food processor.
I have some fresh cumin.
People have a love/hate relationship with cumin.
I think that, as long as it's a nice background flavor,
it gives a little body to it,
it gives a little earthiness to the finished hummus.
I would not skip the cumin.
I have some lemon juice.
I'm gonna start out with half a lemon.
I'm gonna save the other half.
And when I taste it,
if I need a little more, I'm gonna put more in.
Hit it with some salt right now.
The extra virgin olive oil has a little bite to it.
It adds a little more creaminess.
And one of the key ingredients to a great hummus
is a really nice tahini.
It adds creaminess, it adds nuttiness to it.
This one is just basically ground up sesame seeds.
And I'm not shy with it.
This amount of chickpeas, I'm using a quarter cup.
So it is a fair amount.
And then all we really have to do right now is puree.
We want it to be nice and smooth. Take time and let it go.
So I can see right away, I'm gonna shut it off,
I can see right away it's too thick.
And that is why I saved my chickpea juice from the cans.
[food processor whirring]
So I'm gonna let it puree for a second and then go again.
[food processor whirring]
Scrape down your sides one more time.
I think this consistency is beautiful.
When you run your spatula through it,
it kind of holds its shape.
[food processor whirring]
And here's the most important part at this time,
I have a spoon and I'm gonna taste.
Biggest mistake home cooks make
is they do not taste their food
until it goes on the table.
[light upbeat music]
It's good, but it needs more salt
and it definitely needs a lot more lemon juice.
A little more olive oil, and believe it or not,
a touch more salt and we're good to go, I think.
[food processor whirring]
One last taste. Really nice, lemony, a little sharp.
What hummus is not complete without:
an assortment of things to dip in that hummus.
We got some beautiful veggies, we got some pita bread,
and then I have garnishes.
We want things to look good as well as taste good.
Take our spoon and we're gonna push it to the edges.
Add my olive oil.
This is extra virgin,
and we want it to be not necessarily swimming in it,
but we do want it to have a nice amount of olive oil.
With my parsley, I'm just gonna pick some leaves
and spread them around.
Parsley's gonna add some freshness to this, some brightness.
Get yourself some nice sea salt,
not because we didn't season it well,
but a little crunch of salt is really nice.
And then some of our Aleppo pepper
gives us a nice smokiness.
And this is how I make hummus at home.
[carrot stick crunches] Mm.
It's got a smooth, creamy, silky texture.
We get that pop of lemon juice
and then the earthy garlic at the end.
Make hummus. Take the time.
Do it for yourself, do it for your family.
[light music]
Spinach and artichoke dip is a dip I make
for almost every single family occasion.
Part of the reason why I choose
to use canned artichokes and frozen spinach
is they are very hard to deal with fresh.
Spinach you have to wash several times,
you have to blanch it, you have to chop it.
Same thing with artichoke.
Super seasonal, super expensive
If you buy them in the store.
I'm gonna start out by putting my cream cheese in, right?
Cream cheese I have is room temperature.
This is about eight ounces,
and this whole brick goes in.
Mayonnaise, this gives us a little bit
of textural difference.
It helps make it a little smoother,
but it also gives a little zip to this.
So I'm just gonna basically put
like a pinch of chili flakes in.
I have some garlic powder
and then I have some Parmesan cheese.
I like to use extra virgin olive oil
and then salt and pepper.
So this is the base for our dip.
We're gonna puree this
until it's nice and smooth, which it is.
I don't have to taste or anything.
Artichokes go in first. We've drained them.
Pulse, pulse, pulse,
'cause we still wanna have a little bit of texture here.
So what I like to do with the spinach is get in there,
and if there's a lot of excess liquid,
this one's actually nice and dry.
And then throw that in there as well.
If you don't take the liquid out,
our spinach and artichoke dip's gonna be watery and wet.
I want it to like stick to whatever I'm dipping in it.
So I pulsed it with the artichokes,
and now I'm gonna do the same thing with the spinach.
I'm not gonna puree it super fine, just pulse.
[food processor whirring]
Give it a quick scrape down.
I think it needs a little more salt,
a little more olive oil as well.
And that's it.
So unlike our onion dip,
which was a little thin and it thickened in the fridge,
what's gonna happen to this is,
once we put in the oven,
it's gonna get like a little thinner
and it's gonna get gooey
'cause all that cheese is gonna melt
and our cream cheese is gonna melt.
So I want this to be a fairly a thick consistency
where it holds onto the spatula.
When I serve my spinach and artichoke dip,
I like to use a cast iron skillet
or something heavy like that
that retains the heat
so that when I put it in the oven,
not only does the dip get hot, I take it out,
I put it on a pot holder or a trivet,
and it stays hot for a little while.
Don't be shy with the cheese.
This is gonna help get it nice and bubbly and brown on top.
So all I gotta do right now is take this,
put in a 300-degree oven
and get it nice and hot.
Fresh from the oven, super hot.
There is a nice crust of Parmesan cheese on top.
If you can't get it crunchy like that,
throw it under the broiler for a minute or two
and it'll give you that nice crunchy top.
Serving this with some crostini.
It's just a baguette with some olive oil,
a little salt, baked in the oven until they're crunchy.
All right, ready to get in there?
Let's see what we can do.
Look at that, you get a little bit of the top.
[crostini crunches]
It's creamy, it's artichokey, it's spinachy,
it's got a nice cheesy crunch from the top,
it'll hold onto your crostini.
This is a real stick-to-your ribs type dip.
I have actually had this for dinner before. [chuckles]
My dips are gonna be better
than anything you can buy in the store, i guarantee it.
The ingredients are better,
the time that I put in has made them much more delicious
than anything you'd get in a package.
It's totally worth making your own dips.
